ouch: another retail bankruptcy

Yesterday at our Future of Health conference, we unveiled the Digital Health 150.

See all the companies here.

I’m still soaking up the last sessions of the conference, so let’s get straight to the research.

As our Future of Health conference draws to a close, we highlight the top-funded digital health startup in every US state, from tech-focused health insurer Oscar in New York to cancer detection startup Grail in California.

See them all here.

Companies are developing new robotic applications to transform medicine — including bionics, disease discovery, and swallowable “pillbots.”

We dig into the emerging robot health trends here.

Big pharma companies are partnering with AI startups to boost drug discovery efforts.

Clients can see how they’re teaming up here.

Marcelo
@ballve

P.S. We’re looking for senior account executives. Take a look at the job description here.

• $1B: Fintech startup Dave became a unicorn after raising $50M at a $1B valuation — a 20x jump in valuation since its prior funding round two years ago. See the rest of the 400+ billion-dollar private companies using our unicorn tracker.

• >55 Ibs: UPS said that it received approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate a “drone airline.” The certification will allow UPS to run drone operations of any scale, carry loads exceeding the previous restriction of 55 pounds, and fly at night. Here are 20 other corporations, from retailers to insurers, pushing ahead with drones.
    
• 10 years: A survey of US manufacturing reported the sharpest monthly contraction since 2009. The survey showed the sector expanding for 3 consecutive years until this August, when it began to contract. From edge computing to machine vision, check out 14 advanced manufacturing trends set to watch here.

• $300,000: A police force in the UK auctioned off approximately $300,000 of seized cryptocurrency in what is being described as a first for the country. Blockchain, the tech that enables cryptocurrencies, is becoming more mainstream — here are 55 big industries it could transform.
• -178 stores: Fast fashion retailer Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy. The 35-year-old company plans to close 178 US stores and mostly exit Europe and Asia, but it also raised $350M in financing to help it continue operations in the meantime. For more on the trends changing retail, check out our Store Of The Future report.

• <6 months: Elon Musk said that SpaceX plans to launch its interplanetary spacecraft — envisioned as being capable of taking humans to Mars — within the next 6 months. The serial entrepreneur has a history of making bold claims while looking to disrupt big industries. Check out 8 industries in his sights here.
• 300 pizzas/hour: Picnic, an early-stage Seattle-based startup, showed off an autonomous robot which it says can make 300 pizzas in an hour. The startup intends to sell subscriptions to restaurants to operate the machine. Robotics isn’t the only tech threatening to change food — see the others in our report on 20 big food & beverage trends.  
• 250M years: Human fetuses fleetingly grow lizard-like muscles on their hands that typically disappear before birth, according to a new study. Researchers say that the muscles stopped being pronounced in our forebearers around 250M years ago and may be a remnant of mammals splitting away from reptilian ancestors.

Biologists are using nontoxic nail polish to identify and count the rare bats, which live in a single steamy cave in western Cuba.

The greater funnel-eared bats are too light and fragile to be tagged with the bands scientists typically use to track birds and larger bats.

The species, N. primus, was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered in 1992. Scientists currently do not know how large the remaining population is.